[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5137-5139]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1750
                       SMALL BUSINESS TAX CUT ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) is recognized for 
28 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that, and 
I really appreciate Chairman Graves making it possible for so many of 
us who care about small business in this country this evening to take a 
little time to talk about how important it is and what we ought to be 
doing to support our small business folks all over the country. After 
all, 70 percent of the jobs that are created historically in the 
American economy aren't the big guys. They're not the huge 
corporations, although we want them to do well and hire a lot of 
people. But even though a lot of people think it's the huge 
corporations that are doing all the hiring, it's really small business 
folks. It's mom-and-pops places. It's people that have fewer than 500 
employees. Oftentimes, fewer than 50. Sometimes it's 5, or even 1. 
These are the folks that historically have created 70 percent of the 
jobs.
  And, unfortunately, I would argue that this administration and the 
policies that have been implemented by many of the folks on the other 
side of the aisle, unfortunately, have made it very challenging to 
these small businesses to be successful and to hire additional 
employees. And there's a whole range of issues that we're going to talk 
about this evening. We have limited time, so I'm going to turn it over 
to a couple of my colleagues.
  I would like to first recognize the gentleman from Arizona, David 
Schweikert, who's been a leader in trying to come up with policies that 
will be supportive for small businesses in this country.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, to my friend, thank you for yielding me 
a few minutes here.
  One of the reasons I'm standing here is, over the last week we've 
heard the President talk about what we call the Buffett rule, and the 
Senate, and its failure to move the Buffett rule--thank heaven. And 
realizing, for a lot of Americans, they don't understand this is, A, 
it's absolutely pretend math. But it's also meant as an absolute attack 
on the entrepreneurs, on the wealth creators and the people that create 
jobs and economic growth in this country.
  So I thought I would do another one of my clocks to try to help folks 
understand the reality of the math. Think about this. We borrow about 
$3.5 billion every single day, which is actually an improvement from 
where we've been, but $3.5 billion every day. There's 1,440 minutes in 
a day. So we were trying to figure out how do you explain how little 
the Buffett rule does to help us in our debt crisis but how much damage 
it will ultimately do to our economic growth.

[[Page 5138]]

  And where this came from is 2 days ago my phone rang, and I had a 
gentleman from my district who was absolutely insistent that the 
Buffett rule would solve the debt problem. So we made a clock. And here 
it is. If you think about how much we borrow in a single day--that $3.5 
billion in a day--how much would the Buffett rule, with our math, how 
much of that day would it cover of the debt? Remember, 1,440 minutes in 
a day. It would cover 3\1/2\ minutes of borrowing in a day. It's 
fantasy.
  So why does the left, why does this President engage in this sort of 
political theater? Maybe because it's good politics. But it's really 
crappy math.
  And here's the reality of our future, and this keeps coming back, and 
why we so desperately have to do those things to get our small 
businesses to start hiring and growing. But we here in the Federal 
Government, we here in Congress, are going to have to deal with a 
reality that's coming at us like a freight train. This year, 63 percent 
of all of our spending is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest 
on the debt, veterans' benefits. In 4\1/2\ years--so the 2017 budget--
75 percent of all of our spending will be what we call the mandatory--
the entitlement.
  It is consuming us as a people. Your government is very quickly 
becoming a health insurer with a shrinking army. We need the President 
to stop pushing policies that attack our job-creation engines. The 
fantasy of things like the Buffett rule may be great politics but it's 
not good for this country.
  Mr. CHABOT. I thank the gentleman.
  Reclaiming my time, the gentleman mentioned the Buffett rule. And 
maybe I'll talk about that as well very briefly here because I think 
the gentleman from Arizona did a great job in showing that this is 
really all about politics, is all this so-called Buffett rule policy 
is.
  There's a gentleman named Charles Krauthammer who happens to be, I 
believe, one of the smartest, most interesting political commentators 
or pundits in the land. I saw him talk about the Buffett rule and what 
a farce it is the other evening, and he illustrated it a little bit 
differently but it's the same type of illustration. One that brings it, 
I think, down to Earth.
  He had the numbers run on this from a very reputable organization. 
And if the dollars were collected on the so-called Buffett tax for the 
next 250 years--so the next 250 years this tax is collected--and he 
commented that that is longer than the Republic has been in existence, 
the United States of America. This is longer than our existence. So you 
collect it for the next 250 years. Do you know how much we would 
actually collect from that relative to the deficit, which is what this 
is supposed to do, pay down the deficit? It wouldn't cover last year's 
deficit alone. So not one year of the Obama deficit would be covered by 
the so-called Buffett rule if we collected it for 250 years. So it's 
nothing but pure politics. Don't be fooled by that.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, as small businesses across the country fight to 
make ends meet and stay out of debt, the Federal Government continues 
to dig itself into a hole with its exorbitant spending habits. Small 
businesses are burdened with massive regulations brought on by 
ObamaCare. They're further plagued by the threat of tax increases--
significant tax increases--next year, should the relief from the 2001 
and 2003 tax cuts be allowed to expire. And that's what some people, 
particular those on the other side of the aisle, would like to happen. 
They would like the tax cuts to go away. In other words, if tax cuts go 
away, taxes go up. And this wasn't on the very wealthy. It was on 
virtually all Americans--middle class folks, people that take advantage 
of the child tax credit, and a whole range of people in the middle. And 
yes, at upper income levels as well.
  So a lot of folks would be hit very hard with this, particularly 
small business folks, because the so-called wealth in this country, 
many of them are small business folks. Again, as I mentioned before, 70 
percent of the jobs in this country are created by those folks. So if 
you're trying to bring the unemployment rate down, why put additional 
burden on the people that are actually creating the jobs?
  Mr. Speaker, tax issues are the single most significant set of 
regulatory burdens for most small businesses. A recent NFIB Research 
Foundation study--the NFIB, by the way, is the National Federation of 
Independent Businesses--found that 4 of the top 10 small business 
problems were tax-related. Just this week, struggling families and 
businesses were forced to give the government more of their hard-earned 
money to satisfy the hungry appetite of government bureaucracies.
  Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. Confiscatory tax rates and fiscal 
irresponsibility have got to come to an end. Small businesses across 
the country are fighting to keep their doors open and keep their lights 
on. It's shameful for the Federal Government to expect these 
hardworking taxpayers to foot the bill for GSA excursions to Las Vegas 
and inept corporate schemes like Solyndra while the backbone of our 
economy, which is the small businesses, continues to suffer. After all, 
American small businesses are responsible, as I said before, for 70 
percent of the jobs that are created in this country. Why do we want to 
continue to make life so difficult for them? Why are they the target 
for the left in this House so often?
  The America I know is a Nation where hard work creates opportunities 
for success. After all, that's what our forefathers were seeking in the 
first place. At the founding of our Nation, small businessowners came 
to this land to escape excessive taxation and cumbersome regulation. 
These were families of farmers and builders, traders, inventors, and 
merchants. It's disheartening that today it's our very own government 
that's creating the job-killing taxation and regulation.
  Our economy is still struggling to rebound from the worst recession 
since the Great Depression, and we must support the engine that will 
propel America forward. This engine has always been fueled by hard work 
and an economic climate that rewards success.
  When I'm back home in my district in greater Cincinnati, I make a 
point to frequently meet with small businessowners to talk about their 
successes as well as their struggles. I too often hear that the burden 
of taxes and regulations, coupled with great uncertainty, is keeping 
these businesses from growing, and in many cases forcing many of them 
to close their doors altogether.
  That's why I'm a cosponsor of H.R. 9, the Small Business Tax Cut Act. 
If passed, this legislation would amend the Internal Revenue Code to 
allow American businesses a tax deduction of 20 percent. This is common 
sense. It's a fair bill that would help small businessowners to keep 
more of what they have earned to invest in expansion and hiring. That's 
the important thing--hiring Americans who now need those jobs.

                              {time}  1800

  We still have over 8 percent that are unemployed. I urge my 
colleagues to support this critical legislation that will be a shot in 
the arm to small businesses across the Nation. If there are any of my 
colleagues that would have any additional things they would like to 
say, we would welcome them at this time.
  May I ask the Speaker how much time we have remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Ohio has 16 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. CHABOT. One of the other issues that we haven't covered too much 
here, and let me talk about this very briefly, is the impact that the 
high cost of energy, gasoline in particular, what kind of difficulty 
that's causing small businesses across the country, because I hear this 
all the time from my small business constituents. It's not surprising 
that energy prices, and gas prices in particular, have been going up so 
much. They're double--the gas prices alone at the pump are double what 
they were when the Obama administration took over, and that's most 
unfortunate.
  But it's really not surprising when you consider the person that 
President Obama appointed to be the head of energy in this country. The 
chief mind

[[Page 5139]]

about energy and what we should do about it is the Secretary of Energy, 
Steven Chu. Steven Chu a couple of months before President Obama 
appointed him to that position said that it was his goal, what we ought 
to try to do, what we ought to strive for, is to raise the price of 
gasoline in this country, energy costs, prices of gasoline, for 
example, to European levels. Think of that.
  Now they've got approximately, it depends on the country you're 
talking about, but it's around $9 a gallon--they do liters over there--
but it's about $9 a gallon. Now we're not there yet, but, 
unfortunately, we're well on our way. It's approaching $4 back in my 
district in Cincinnati. Here in Washington, just the other day, I had 
to fill up, and it was about $4.50. So we're not quite there yet, but 
we're approaching that. It's just unbelievable that we're in this 
state.
  But really I guess it shouldn't be surprising when you consider that 
the person that President Obama put in control of our energy policy 
here in this country said that it was his goal to get energy prices up 
to European levels. As I say, unfortunately, we're well on our way.
  Those gas prices, that's what the delivery trucks have to pay, the 
small business folks that are delivering things to towns, or getting 
products from other manufacturers. When they come in, they cost more. 
So they can't charge the consumers as much; or if they do, they drive 
those consumers away. So it's a vicious circle. We need to get energy 
prices down in this country, and, unfortunately, they're on their way 
up.
  Another, I think, terrible mistake that this administration has made 
is to basically shut the door on the Keystone pipeline. This is oil 
sands from Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north. Our largest 
supplier of petroleum, by the way, is Canada. And this is a pipeline 
that would mean a significant number of jobs here in the United States, 
tens of thousands of jobs. And if we ever needed jobs, we know it's 
now. And those are good-paying jobs. Many of them are union jobs. But 
the President has decided that, no, we're not going to make this 
decision until maybe after the election. So tens of thousands of jobs 
are at risk here.
  Canada has been pretty clear about what they're going to do. If we're 
not going to accept the oil in our country and build the pipeline, it's 
quite likely that they'll go ahead and build the pipeline through 
Canada to British Columbia and ship that oil that ought to be going to 
the U.S. to China, who is one of our biggest competitors in a lot of 
ways. And if you know anything about China, the environmental controls 
that they have over there are far weaker than what we have in the 
United States.
  So if your goal is to make sure that you're protecting the 
environment--and that's what many of the President's allies, the really 
radical left-wing environmentalists who are fighting against the 
Keystone pipeline--if you buy their argument, what they're saying is 
they want to protect the environment by not having that oil come down 
here and be refined in the gulf. But the controls we have here are much 
stronger than what they are over in China. So you're not protecting the 
environment at all or climate change or anything else if you're going 
to allow them to spew out what they usually do in China when they 
handle refining and manufacturing oftentimes and a lot of other things.
  We all know how the administration supported an organization like 
Solyndra and how much tax dollars were wasted there. And it goes on and 
on. So the energy policy in this country by this administration is 
impacting consumers. It's impacting you and me and anybody who goes and 
fills up at the gas pump nowadays. But it's also adversely impacting 
small businesses and job creation.
  Another way that this administration, I believe, has made a mistake 
which is causing these high prices is to continue to keep off limits 
much of the Outer Continental Shelf. The gulf, the moratorium, was 
disastrous for jobs in the gulf region after the spill down there; and, 
yes, it should have been investigated very thoroughly. But a lot of 
those oil derricks ended up leaving that area. They couldn't hold out 
with that cost, the expensive capital costs over 6 months' period of 
time, so they ended up off the coast of Brazil, for example.
  And the President famously said, We'll be happy to buy your oil, 
Brazil. Well, we can look at oil all around the world, but we ought to 
be self-sufficient. And the President said he was interested in being 
energy self-sufficient in this country, but his policies are anything 
but that.
  So he continues to put off limits much of the Outer Continental 
Shelf. We had the disaster in the gulf, and ANWR up in Alaska the 
administration has continued to put off limits. Now, we need to do all 
these things in an environmentally safe manner. And we have the ability 
to do that now. But, again, this administration has shut this down. 
That's affecting all of us in higher and higher gas prices. So it's 
long overdue for this administration to take a look, a long hard look, 
at what their policies are doing to the country and to reconsider this, 
to allow us to go after oil that we have available to us, clean coal, 
natural gas, and a whole range of fuels that we have here in this 
country so we don't have to be buying that from countries that 
oftentimes don't have our best interests at heart.
  It sends a lot of money over to regions and countries where, 
unfortunately, a lot of terrorism that has endangered the world and 
endangers us has come from. So those dollars aren't always spent in a 
way that's going to help the United States. So, it's time for the 
administration to turn its policies around.
  Mr. Speaker, without further ado, I will yield back the balance of my 
time.

                          ____________________